Pre-E3 2008: Jumpgate: Evolution Preview

Share.

We dive into NetDevil's action-focused space combat MMO.

By Charles Onyett

While the glory days of space combat games like Wing Commander, Privateer, and TIE Fighter are apparently long-gone, NetDevil is hard at work on a massively multiplayer entry in the genre called Jumpgate: Evolution. You may read that and think, "Wait, didn't Jumpgate come out in 2001?" and you'd be correct. Jumpgate: Evolution is being designed to be just what its title implies: an updated, more streamlined game using Jumpgate's fiction and featuring fancy new graphics.

But what is Jumpgate: Evolution? Well, it's a space action game with an emphasis on accessibility, and functions much like you might expect if you're familiar with the genre at all. It is not, as some might think when they see screens, like CCP's EVE Online, a game where you click to auto-attack. In JE, the emphasis is on twitch gameplay, where you directly fly your ship using the keyboard to control boost and braking, strafing, aiming, and pitch. Enemies fly around and it's up to you to pursue, engage, aim your reticule and blast them into bits with whatever energy weapons, missiles or other armaments are equipped.

Build your licenses and expand your pool of ships.

Before delving into the depths of the game, you'll need to create a character. Choosing between three human factions, the Solrain, Quantar, and Octavius, is the first order of business, followed by picking one of many character portraits. Since there isn't any in-game portrayal of an actual character model, your portrait, name, and ship will basically be your identity, and it seems as though switching ships will occur quite frequently.

Things start out simple, with a brief intro cinematic giving way to some simple missions meant to act as tutorials. They basically require you to blast apart roving pirates and enemy vessels around a base, and playing through gave us an idea of how the game works and feels. According to NetDevil president Scott Brown, "It's really kind of a sandbox MMO much more than a 'here's this pre-built story, now play through these missions.' Kind of the best comparison I would give to it is, it's really more like a Grand Theft Auto style. There's a lot of things going on in the world and you can choose to work with what you want to work with."

We were using a mouse and keyboard for the demo, using W to thrust forward, Q and E to roll our ship, Space to brake and A and D to essentially strafe. It's kind of strange to say strafe when talking about space flight, but that's the kind of arcade feel NetDevil wants to build into JE. For those who prefer something slightly along the lines of Newtonian physics, there's a control assist toggle you can switch to off at which point your ship's momentum will be conserved to a degree when trying to make sharp directional changes. For instance, if you're hurtling forward and suddenly hit the brakes you won't zip off in a new direction as soon as you want to. You'll instead drift in the direction you were originally going, letting you do things like fly backwards while firing.

It's a jumpgate.

In battle the better pilots should be able to manage their ever-changing trajectory while keeping the firing reticule trained on their target. Like in other space combat games, an icon pops up on enemies indicating how much of a lead you should give your shots to successfully connect, and your own reticule turns red when over the lead target to make it even more obvious when to fire. Enemies nearby show up on a list on the screen's left side, listed by numbers. To select specific targets you can hit the corresponding number key or mouse wheel scroll through the list. Once targeted, you just follow the arrow on your screen until the enemy is in view, line up your shots and blast away. Depending on your preference, you'll be able to pilot your ship in behind the ship, first-person, and first-person with visible cockpit views.

From destroyed vessels you'll gain experience and loot drops ranging from weapon parts to crafting components, and, like in other MMOs, the more difficult foes designed as group targets drop better stuff. We were shown a brief combat section early in the game, one of the first group-centric encounters, where the challenge was to take down a space station. The battle progressed in several stages, with a series of power cores and generators becoming vulnerable after an outer bank of turrets were disabled.

Killing foes levels you up, as you might expect, but NetDevil isn't building in any artificial level limitations. "The levels don't give you any benefit, per se, other than unlocking capabilities," said Brown. "There's no dice rolls or anything in the game, it's all about your ship and you abilities as a player...If you're level 12 and you shoot a level 20 you do less damage, there's nothing like that in the game."

For any hardcore space action fans, you should know there won't be in-depth battle mechanics such as diverting shield power to specific components of your ship (diverting power to rear shields to better ensure an escape) or disabling enemy sub-systems (destroying engines or weapons). Instead, you're basically just dealing with shield and armor ratings, which can be tweaked with equipped items back at a base.